Quote Originally Posted by squark View Post
Well, that's the thing. You don't just categorize things for the sake of it - that'd be like mindlessly stacking pennies or something. There'd be no point. Instead, it can be one way of how you start to come to an understanding of things. In other words, if you look at Darwin's journals there are a number of phylogenetic trees he drew out, trying to classify the animals he came across, and by seeing relationships between different animals an idea forms. . .
Yes... I'm not saying that it's never necessarily or that it's pointless. But obviously just classifying things is not the point. And if Socionics ever does is to just classify things, then that'd be just missing the point.

Quote Originally Posted by squark View Post
You have a romanticized view of science, and you're missing the context. The "Eureka!" only comes after a lot of deliberation on an idea, noticing things, observing, and sometimes sorting things out into categories in order to get a better picture of how they all fit. Taxonomy was necessary for Darwin's theory, a building block in the process. The theory couldn't have come about without it.
Science is about (finding) problems, and solving that problem. If all you're ever going to do is to just gather data and hoping to come up with something, then you're probably not going to come up with much.

Not saying that I can do it either, but you probably shouldn't discourage anyone from coming up with explanations.

You might also say that science is mostly about drudgery and boring menial work, but maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe science should be fun.